In recent years, semiconductor storage devices, for example, flash memory cards, which are non-volatile semiconductor storage media, have been developed and are widely used as external storage devices for information devices such as a digital camera which is a host device. Accompanying an increasing volume of data handled by host devices, volume and density of flash memories are also being increased.
A NAND type flash memory is a flash memory featuring a large volume and widely used particularly for applications such as file memories in recent years.
The NAND type flash memory uses electric charge injected into a trap layer made up of a floating gate or multi-layered film via a tunnel insulating film, in other words, a charge accumulated layer as digital bit information according to the amount of electric charge and reads the digital bit information as two-valued or multi-valued information. Unlike destructive reading type memory such as DRAM, the NAND type flash memory can read data without corrupting data.
Semiconductor storage devices are required to realize higher-speed writing and reading and also required to increase the bus transfer rate of a transfer bus. For this reason, for example, a high-speed mode specification with the transfer clock frequency of a memory card bus increased from 25 MHz in a normal mode to 50 MHz is defined allowing fast data transfers.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2007-11788 discloses a memory card, for faster data transfer, that provides an ultra-high-speed mode capable of achieving a double data transfer rate at the same clock frequency as that of a high-speed mode by transmitting/receiving data in synchronization with the rising edge and falling edge of a clock signal supplied from a host device.
However, increasing the transfer clock frequency raises a problem of shielding unnecessary radiation electromagnetic wave, that is, taking remedial actions for EMI (Electro Magnetic Susceptibility). Furthermore, increasing the transfer clock frequency also results in a problem that power consumption of the memory card increases.
To solve these problems, it is effective to reduce signal voltages of transmission/reception signals between the memory card and a host device. However, when the signal voltage of a transmission/reception signal is changed, a voltage higher than expected is applied, increasing a possibility that an I/O cell of the memory card or host device may be destroyed.